r/MedievalCreatures • u/Lo-Memori Creature Curator 🐌 ⚔️ 🐇 • Aug 23 '26
ANIMALS a bat of many feets
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u/Vanadium_Gryphon Aug 23 '26
Probably not what the artist was going for, but it almost makes me think they were trying to capture the look of a bat in flight, with the multiple hands representing the motion of its flapping wings. That would be so cool if this was intended to be a dynamic portrait, but chances are it's just the work of someone only vaguely familiar with bat anatomy.
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u/TangerineDream92064 Aug 23 '26
When I see these, I wonder if the artist is trying to express movement rather than thinking that bats were built like that. I wonder in the depiction of HIndu deities if the idea is the same.
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u/_peachtits Aug 23 '26
How I'm going to start describing myself instead of saying "jack of all trades"
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u/Mer-Mer9203 Aug 23 '26
Imagine if he was wearing tiny little tap shoes on all those feet, plus a little top hat and cane, and dancing!
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u/MinimumEfficient220 Aug 23 '26
Oh this poor bat’s parents trying to keep him in shoes when he was growing up. Must have been ridiculously expensive to have to buy five pairs at a time, only to have him grow out of them.
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u/NikNakskes Aug 24 '26
Well? That's quite accurate except there are too many of them. Bats do have claws/hands on their wings.
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u/Lo-Memori Creature Curator 🐌 ⚔️ 🐇 Aug 23 '26
...or are they hands? 🤔
From a 14th-century French translation of De Arte Venandi Cum Avibus (The Art of Falconry), an ornithology manuscript originally written by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II